Fallujah - Sunni Triangle

[QRQ 30]

I feel the reaction shoul d be (er, should have been), swift and violent. It should also be controlled. The inhabitants need to be made to realize that we are reacting in kind to an act of violence rather than pure hatred against the inhabitants. When the people realize the results of terrorist activities, they will be more cooperative in turning in the terrorists. The consequences of "looking away" have to be more severe than the consequences of being a "snitch".

To react out of hatred for the people negates our reasons for being there.

Contractors should have the means of self-defense but not become mercenaries or vigilanties. We still have to keep our goals in mind -- which I thought were a free and self-determining nation of Iran.

Though this was much more violent than previous demonstrations, you will notice that the Middle Easterners love to dance in the streets -- for either side. Sometime pay close attention to the videos and you may recognize the same familiar faces-- almost always right in front of the camera. It is almost as if some of the demonstrators ar paid actors for the news photographerts.

My God!! some of what I see is over the hill. Should we have bombed Watts off of the map because of somewhat similar riots?

[NousDefionsDoc]

Its a mob with a mob mentality. Mr. Harsey's friend Col. Applegate did quite a bit of work with mobs over the years. A British technique used against the Boers also comes to mind. What I am thinking is separate the women and children (not teenagers), send them to a containment area. Then go through the place one door at a time. Shot fired, building disappears.

ID card the males over age 10. Use the videos from the incident to go after the ones needed for an example. Name a military mayor. Summary military tribunals out in the sunshine.

Make the guilty walk point and drive the vehicles in the convoys that are getting hit.

That sort of thing.

[Airbornelawyer]

Whatever is done needs to be done soon. An anniversary is approaching. On April 28, 2003, U.S. forces killed some 13+ Iraqis and wounded 75-100 in Fallujah in a controversial incident. It happened during a protest when marchers, including a lot of children (three of the dead were reportedly children under 10), marched on the base that the 82nd had set up in a school. According to CENTCOM, the U.S. troops opened fire when they received fire from armed men in the crowd, but the evidence is in dispute (one report says rocks being thrown by protesters shattered vehicle glass and was mistaken for automatic weapons fire). The Fallujis, naturally, claimed no one in the crowd was armed and the Americans fired on unarmed civilians. Makes more sense that fedayeen used the protest as a cover (or instigated the protest to get cover) to get close to U.S. troops and provoke the incident.

On the Muslim calendar, the first anniversary of that incident will be this April 16. On the Western calendar, of course, the anniversary is April 28. So both dates bear watching for efforts by agitators to start something again.

[QRQ 30]

Another solution which worked. CRS exactly but around 1966-67 there were violent anti-american riots in Panama City with the mob threatening to cross into the Canal Zone. About a half dozen snipers "neutralized" the leaders and the riots stopped.

A mob is comprised of 99% followers. Take out the kingpins and it disperses.

Of coursae I guess we could kill each manchild over the age of three!!

As a minor point, the British and French used "Scorched Earth" policies in North Africa and the Middle East. Guess how many of those countries still fly the Union Jack and the French Tri-color.

[pulque]

Originally posted by The Reaper Don't tell me we couldn't have made an air strike on that party while it was underway. They took several hours to finish.

would've been good.

RIP

[ktek01]

Originally posted by QRQ 30
Another solution which worked. CRS exactly but around 1966-67 there were violent anti-american riots in Panama City with the mob threatening to cross into the Canal Zone. About a half dozen snipers "neutralized" the leaders and the riots stopped.

A mob is comprised of 99% followers. Take out the kingpins and it disperses.

I really like that one, we should be doing a lot of that.

[Solid]

How do you think the Press would react to such an action? Is there any way to limit the ability of the press to know about such operations, let alone report them?

Thank you,

Solid

[lrd]

Coalition Provisional Authority Briefing: http://www.defenselink.mil/transcrip...0401-0575.html

Q General, there certainly didn't seem to be a pell-mell response yesterday. We spoke to the ICDC today who went and picked up the bodies. They said they didn't dare go near the bodies which were on the bridge until 8:00 in the evening, which would make it about 10 hours after the attack. Can you explain how it was possible that American civilians' bodies were dragged around a town which is guarded by thousands of Marines for a good 10 hours, left out in the street, and nobody did anything?

GEN. KIMMITT: Well, first of all, I don't know the exact time line. And second, it was the determination of the personnel in the region that by the time they would have arrived or could have arrived, those persons were already dead and they were being controlled by some of these insurgents. I think that there was a well thought-out decision on the part of the Marines that let's not rush headlong into there, there may be ambushes set up, there may be civilians being used as human shields. And at this point, while it was dreadful, while it was unacceptable, while it was bestial, a preemptive attack into the city could have taken a bad situation and made it even worse. We will be back in Fallujah. It will be at the time and the place of our choosing. We will hunt down the criminals. We will kill them or we will capture them. And we will pacify Fallujah.

Q Can I just ask one quick follow-up. Just does it not send out a rather dangerous message that these people can get away with this, pretty much do whatever they want? I mean, I was in Fallujah today and people were saying, "Yeah, the Americans were scared to come back in." Does that not send out a bad message of tolerance of violence?

GEN. KIMMITT: Ask them after the Americans have come back in.

[QRQ 30]

Originally posted by Solid
How do you think the Press would react to such an action? Is there any way to limit the ability of the press to know about such operations, let alone report them?

Thank you,

Solid

We can't let the press dictate our actions. They will always find or invent something to report. This is basically no different than SWAT operations. Most people realize that the death of a few to save the lives of innocents is justified. We see people crying for retalliation and then worry about a few snipers??

If we were to fire on the crowd in general, would we curtail or prevent the ambushes or merely the demonstrators?

[QRQ 30]

General Kimmet's remarks bother me: "Just wait!!!" I am sorry but if I am going to smack someone I'll do it right now and talk about it later. I hope we aren't going to start following Israeli tactics in the West Bank. You can see how successful they have been in bring peace to the area.

How many demontrators do you suppose there were.? In a city of 280,000 some want to punish the entire city. Isn't this like killing a man because he has an infected hand?

[NousDefionsDoc]

FALLUJAH, IRAQ: A previously unknown group claimed the gruesome killing of four US contractors in Fallujah, western Iraq, in revenge for Israel's assassination of Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, according to the AFP.

"This is a gift from the people of Fallujah to the people of Palestine and the family of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin who was assassinated by the criminal Zionists," said in the statement from the "Brigades of Martyr Ahmed Yassin."

"We advise the US forces to withdraw from Iraq and we advise the families of the American soldiers and the contractors not to come to Iraq," said the statement obtained by AFP.

The statement, entitled "Fallujah, the graveyard of the Americans," claimed the group's fighters killed "members of the Central Intelligence Agency and the Zionist Mossad," referring to Israel's intelligence agency.

It said the "blind violence" of Fallujah residents resulted from an increasing hatred of the Americans and was also in response to the "US aggression, raids on mosques and homes, the arrests, the torture of clerics and the terrorizing of women and
children."

[ktek01]

Originally posted by Solid
Is there any way to limit the ability of the press to know about such operations, let alone report them?

Thank you,

Solid

I can think of one way.

[D9 (RIP)]

Originally posted by QRQ 30
General Kimmet's remarks bother me: "Just wait!!!" I am sorry but if I am going to smack someone I'll do it right now and talk about it later. I hope we aren't going to start following Israeli tactics in the West Bank. You can see how successful they have been in bring peace to the area.

I agree. Kimmet has said two things that really bother me. One is that we will strike at a time and place of our choosing. As The Reaper pointed out, common sense dictates that there could hardly be a more opportune moment to hit the bad guys than when they are out in the street beating the bodies of murdered Americans with shovels. This fact will not even be lost on the halfwits that comprised that mob. It seems analagous to a playground bully who walks up and punches another kid in the face. Afterwards, the kid runs away. Later, when the other kids find the victim sulking, they tease him. His response is that he's going to get that bully back one of these days, when he feels like it.

The other statement he is making is that we are going to strike surgically (or something to that effect, can't recall the exact term), yet overwhelmingly. Seems to me that if we go in surgically, it is going to be to grab/kill a few bad guys. I doubt this will overwhelm the city of Fallujah. In this instance, I think the concepts of "surgical" and "overwhelming" are our basic alternatives, and frankly I'm afraid that the descriptive term "overwhelming" is just supposed to put an intimidating wrapper on what is otherwise going to be a pretty low-key operation. I hope I'm wrong.

Originally posted by QRQ 30
How many demontrators do you suppose there were.? In a city of 280,000 some want to punish the entire city. Isn't this like killing a man because he has an infected hand?

I seriously doubt that all 280,000 people in the city knew about the attack. The question is, if they had, what would their reaction have been. As well as I understand, those who were in the area of the attack and were aware of it as it was happening joined in the barabaric parade (or at least a large percentage did). I do think you need to punish the entire city - they at least need to be made to understand that if they tolerate animals like that in their midst it involves a certain danger that when the Americans come for retribution, they may be confused as one of the bad guys.

It would seem to me that when you have a benign population who is more or less sympathetic and helpful to you, but within which a small contingent of goons operates, then it makes sense to appeal to the sympathies of the population and work to surgically remove the malignant element. It is analagous to a cancerous tumor which has not spread. You want to remove the tumor with minimal damage to the surrounding, benign, tissue. Once the cancer has spread throughout the body, however, a different approach is necessitated that attacks the whole body indescriminately. In cities like Fallujah and Samara, I think it is time to consider this approach.

Everyone I know who's been over there says that towns like Fallujah and Samara are infected to the core with the kind of anti-American sentiment that fueled these recent atrocities. We've tried the carrot, it's time for the stick IMO. If the population of these places will not voluntarily break ties with these monsters, then they must be made to do so coercively. This, IMHO, necessitates making the population at large feel the pain of this kind of treachery. There is a certain, psychological, value for us in having the people of Fallujah know that if the bad guys in their midst continue with their depredations, it will bring down our wrath on the whole city at large.

Same goes for Samara, Tikrit, and any of these other cities where the men of our military or CPA contractors have to take extraordinary risks to even drive down the streets.

[Surgicalcric]

I could not agree more D9.

It is time time to begin Chemotherapy.

[The Reaper]

To quote from a Batman movie:

"This town needs an enema."

We could hand out $100 bills and not make friends there. They hate us regardless, are constantly bombarded with anti-US propoganda, and the vast majority seem to support the terrorists.

Harsh times call for harsh measures. The best time to strike has been missed. We need to pursue those responsible via the limited means we have available, but prepare so that the next time it happens, the retribution is swift, merciless, and extreme.

If we cannot make them love us, we should make them respect (or at least fear) us.

I would not be beyond using bait to get them to attempt the same action again, and then pile on.

I suspect that if you did that a couple of times, the number of people who would attempt the hit would drop through losses, and the groups who would mutilate the bodies would lean through Darwinian selection that it was not a smart thing to do.

How about a remotely controlled vehicle with an explosive payload? Sort of a "Q-Ship".

Just a thought.

TR